Erlanger-Elsmere Independent Superintendent Matt Engel has spent much of his life and all of his 28-year career in education in the district. Photo courtesy Matt Engel
The new superintendent of Erlanger-Elsmere Independent, Matt Engel, is bringing a renewed focus on improving student outcomes to the district and wants to encourage student participation in opportunities outside school.
“We are first and foremost an academic institution and improving all outcomes for all students is a continual focal point of mine,” Engel said. “We want to see various opportunities be presented to them beyond the four walls of the traditional school, … whether that’s on college campuses, whether that’s in internships with some of our local businesses; the idea is to continue to improve the overall experience, but in the process, change outcomes.”
Engel is also focusing on bringing more professional development opportunities to teachers and staff. He believes it’s essential for teachers to have content-specific professional learning that meets their specific needs in the classroom.
“The most impactful tool we have in our schools is a well-prepared, well-versed, loving teacher, and the more that we can pour into supporting teacher and staff development, the more that we can pour into the development of our building and district leaders to support those teachers; again, it all connects to what my overarching goal is, and that’s improve outcomes for our kids,” he said.
He said the professional learning opportunities should be meaningful for teachers rather than only to fulfill compliance requirements.
“I’m focused on providing them professional learning that actually moves the needle for kids and actually changes their pedagogical and assessment capacity,” Engel said. “If we find and develop and create those exercises, those learning experiences for them, there’s a better chance that it’s going to actually leave the training table and make its way into the classroom and become practically applicable in the everyday delivery model that our teachers present to our kids.”
Engel has spent much of his life and all 28 years of his teaching career in the Erlanger-Elsmere Independent district. He graduated from Lloyd Memorial High School in 1994, and soon after starting college at Northern Kentucky University, he was asked to help coach basketball at Lloyd, which he said ignited a love of working with youth.
He graduated with a bachelor’s in English language and literature/letters and earned a master’s in education, all from Northern Kentucky University. His first job after graduating was teaching English at Lloyd Memorial High School.
“What I found was being around kids in various capacities was something I enjoyed and I enjoyed my content,” he said. “To this day, I really feel like I’m an English teacher at heart.”
After seven years in the classroom, Engel became one of the assistant principals at Lloyd for three years and principal at Arnett Elementary for six years. Later, he joined district leadership as supervisor of instruction and in 2020, he became assistant superintendent.
“At no point did I even consider applying anywhere else; this was going to be the only place that I had a desire to serve, because serving this community means a great deal to me,” Engel said. “Trying to support teachers and staff that I’ve worked with for the better part of 27 years, supporting a community that truly helped raise me up, it matters to me. I want to continue to be part of what makes these two cities of Erlanger and Elsmere and our school districts successful.”
He said his long time experience in the district and established relationships with staff will help maintain trust between people in the district.
“Being here now in my 28th year, I’ve worked with the gross majority of the staff in this district for a very long time; we know each other personally and we know each other professionally,” he said. “It makes the very challenging task of educating our youth a whole lot easier.
“Teaching is an art. Teaching is very challenging. But when you have a collection of people that you love and trust and they are all rowing the boat in the same direction with you, that’s why I do what I do,” Engel continued. I’m so grateful for the collection of people that we have working in this district that are committed to a mission and vision to improve outcomes for these kids.”
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